Guild Wars 2

Every state of the game and major patch features nerfs to traits and utilities multiple builds use in an attempt to reduce the effectiveness of d/d bunkers, and along with these nerfs Arenanet talks about making other builds viable but doing nothing to bring viability about.

I wanted to give some suggestions to make the other weapon sets more appealing, starting with staff.

Fire

Fire is fairly well balanced doesn’t really need any changes to make it better.

Water

Water Blast: Fine as is.
Ice Spike: Combine with Frozen Ground, reduce the the duration of chill applied and the duration of the field to match up with the casting time/animation of Ice Spike and bump the cooldown to up to 10-15 seconds.
Geyser: Fine as is.
Frozen Ground: This becomes an AoE Frost Armour ability, 5 second duration 40 second cooldown.
Healing Rain: Fine as is.

Air

Chain Lightning: Fine as is.
Lightning Surge: Reduce casting time to 1 second.
Gust: Change into a ground target ability like Whirlwind Attack, slight increase to width of the projectile.
Windborne Speed: Reduce cooldown by 5 seconds.
Static Field: Fine as is.

Earth

Stoning: Fine as is.
Eruption: Reduce animation time by 1 second.
Magnetic Aura: Reduce cooldown to around 20 seconds.
Unsteady Ground: Reduce cooldown by 5 seconds.
Shockwave: Change into a ground target ability like Whirlwind Attack, slight increase to width of the projectile. Reduce cooldown by 5 seconds.

Scepter auto attacks need a buff to their base damage, the percentage will have to vary from each skill.

Fire

Flamestrike: Fine with baseline damage boost.
Dragons Tooth: Removing the casting time or making it ground targeted with a shorter animation will make this skill more reliable for damage. One option or the other would help.
Phoenix: Increase the speed of the phoenix, about double the speed it currently travels as it takes about 6 seconds for ability to complete its animation as is.

Water

Ice Shards: Fine with baseline damage boost.
Shatterstone: No longer ground targeted, requires a target to cast. Selected target becomes a shatterstone bomb same effects it currently has except its stuck to and centered on a target.
Water Trident: Removes a condition from effected allies.

Air

Arc Lightning: Now arcs to 2 other targets within 600 range of the primary for reduced damage about 50-75% what the main target receives.
Lightning Strike: Fine as is.
Blinding Flash: Blinds enemies in a 90 degree radius centered on your target.

Earth

Stone Shards: Fine with baseline damage boost.
Rock Barrier: Casting time reduced by .5 seconds.
Dust Devil: Change into a ground target ability like Whirlwind Attack, slight increase to width of the projectile.

And finally Focus.

Fire

Flamewall: Fine as is.
Fire Shield: Reduced cooldown to 30 seconds.

Water

Freezing Gust: Fine as is.
Comet: Now ground targeted.

Air

Swirling Winds: Fine as is.
Gale: Reduce cooldown about 5 seconds.

Earth

Magnetic Wave: Reduce cooldown to 20 seconds.
Obsidian Flesh: Fine as is.

I’m not saying all of these changes need to be made, just throwing out ideas for the skills to make them more appealing than just going d/d bunker and also to compensate for the attempted nerfs to d/d that hit other builds harder.

Snickers.9570:

Frozen Ground: This becomes an AoE Frost Armour ability, 5 second duration 40 second cooldown.

What you’re describing is exactly what Frozen Ground does when you activate a blast finisher in the field. Your suggestion would thus be a major nerf.

Gust: Change into a ground target ability like Whirlwind Attack, slight increase to width of the projectile.
Windborne Speed: Reduce cooldown by 5 seconds.

Gust could benefit greatly from a faster projectile. Windborne speed wouldn’t matter much seeing that perma swiftness is commonplace on eles.

Eruption: Reduce animation time by 1 second.
Magnetic Aura: Reduce cooldown to around 20 seconds.
Shockwave: Change into a ground target ability like Whirlwind Attack, slight increase to width of the projectile. Reduce cooldown by 5 seconds.

Eruption’s ability to combo with other fields is what makes its casting time good. I’d rather see it get instant casting time instead. That would also speed it up but still allow for combos.
Magnetic Aura change would be pretty sweet. However, seeing as how it’s much better than Fire Aura, you may wanna make that one have 20 recharge too, and maybe give MA 25 instead.
Shockwave like Gust is fine in theory, but could benefit greatly from a much bigger projectile speed.

ThiBash.5634:

What you’re describing is exactly what Frozen Ground does when you activate a blast finisher in the field. Your suggestion would thus be a major nerf.

The functionality would still be there with Ice Spike gaining the frozen ground effects, the change would give an on-demand option without having to apply a blast finisher.

Gust could benefit greatly from a faster projectile. Windborne speed wouldn’t matter much seeing that perma swiftness is commonplace on eles.

Windborne speed cooldown was more for the movement speed curing effects not so much the swiftness. I thought about a faster projectile for for Gust and Shockwave but one of the issues I always have is the horrible tracking the skills like it have, you either use it pointblank or hope the target stays stationary.

Eruption’s ability to combo with other fields is what makes its casting time good. I’d rather see it get instant casting time instead. That would also speed it up but still allow for combos.

Reducing the animation time by 1 second would make Eruptions take 3.5 seconds to go off instead of the 4.5 it now has, combos would happen slightly faster with an animation reduction.

Magnetic Aura change would be pretty sweet. However, seeing as how it’s much better than Fire Aura, you may wanna make that one have 20 recharge too, and maybe give MA 25 instead.

Both of those suggestions would be completely reasonable to have.

fire on focus definitely needs a buff, that Flamewall is terrible, too small…